1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to the start-up/boot time of operating systems of computer systems.
2. Background Information
In the past decade, performance of microprocessor based computer systems have increased dramatically. In particular, the operating speed of microprocessors have increased from the meager 16 MHz to well over 200 MHz. This trend is expected to continue without abatement. Correspondingly, while not as dramatic, performance of system and input/output (I/O) buses have also improved substantially, ensuring the microprocessors have adequate data to work with and kept busy. However, except for the improvement provided by buffering etc., the performance of disk drive has lagged behind. As a result, users are often deprived of the full benefit of the increased performance by the microprocessors. For example, when starting up a computer system, because the large majority of time is often spent on loading the kernel and the essential device drivers of the operating system into memory from a disk drive, a user often does not see any significant difference in performance whether the user is using a system equipped with a 100 MHz microprocessor or a 200 MHz microprocessor. Thus, it is desirable to be able to reduce the start-up/boot time of an operating system. As will be disclosed in more detail below, the present invention provides the desired improvement as well as other desirable results, which will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, upon reading the detailed description to follow.